Friday, August 05, 2005

Election Reform 2005 (Part 4)

In the last three parts of this series of posts, I used the title ironically....since there has been no election reform to speak of this year...and I've examined some of the reasons why.

But this post is different. This post is a happy post.

Michael at Reading A1 linked to my post which compared Daily Kos to Billmon on the Hackett-Schmidt race, and a comment was left by eRobin, who describes herself as "one of the original eVoting Cassandras."

At her blog, Fact-esque, eRobin provides hope for those who fear that significant election reform will not come about (although I've been sarcastic the last week...I do still retain hope and will continue to fight):

"My mom faithfully attends the DFA meet-ups in her town. She was responsible for turning the group against the idea of having Leiberman talk to them, so you can imagine how proud I am of her. Well today I found out that she's also responsible for bringing voter verified paper trails to Connecticut. Thanks to her relentless and charming harrassment of Bob Duff, combined with strategically showing her support for him during the campaign through donations (sometimes amounting to as much as ten dollars at a time) and clever "Duff for Congress" sign procurement and placement, she has led the CT legislature to see the wisdom of ensuring a voter-verified paper record of every vote. How do I know? Here's how state Sen. Duff, who was at the meet-up, changed the subject of the discussion from campaign finance reform to election reform. My mother's name is Margaret":

"Meet-up members: Lots of talk for and against campaign finance reform."

"Bob Duff: We have done something about - and this is for Margaret - verified voting in Connecticut and that's important."

Thank you, Margaret. We need at least a hundred more of you.

(Big shout-out to Dadahead for a series of posts which have examined the Daily Kos method of discouraging election reform)

Contributors

"Or take this guy, Ron Brynaert, a tenacious (lefty, stand alone) investigator with an instinct for where information and proof and the jugular are. He's a natural: Why isn't he on someone's I-team?" Jay Rosen, June 6, 2005.